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A staffroom plays a number of roles, from café, through professional learning space, to independent work area. As a place of community, personal and professional relationships and camaraderie can thrive in a staffroom. Conversely, it can be a place where personal and professional relationships become fractured, resulting in a negative emotional response for the individual teacher. This qualitative case study explored the social and micropolitical factors that existed within a staffroom and played into the daily interactions and relationships of 17 Australian secondary school teachers who shared the same space. Individual interviews were conducted, focussing on emotions and emotional experiences encountered in the staffroom. This paper examines collegial relations and their impact on the emotional disposition of the individual teacher while sharing a staffroom. Thematic analysis revealed three principal factors as being in operation when participants discussed the nature of their relationships with colleagues in the staffroom: the role of emotional labour and emotional work, the sense of surveillance from visiting senior staff members, and the influence of different forms of collegiality developed with their peers. Findings emphasise the important effect of staffroom relationships on the professional and personal emotionality of a high school teacher, an underexplored area of teachers' work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evidence suggests secondary teachers are increasingly in need of strategies to support students’ literacy development, particularly in the area of reading. Secondary teachers however, are typically trained to be, and often see themselves as, disciplinary experts rather than literacy teachers. The purpose of this paper is to introduce an appropriate model for adolescent readers. This paper draws on two research projects focused on improving literacy learning in the secondary context. Short vignettes describe each school context and outline the approaches used to support their students. Findings show strategies to improve and support students’ literacy learning, particularly reading, need to be student-centred and appropriate for adolescents rather than a ‘top-down’ approach. A whole school, collaborative approach that acknowledges the distinct needs and strength of students is shared. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]